Friday, November 22, 2024

2024 US presidential polls: Harris makes gains on Trump in national averages

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On 21 July, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris. This historic move changed the landscape of the election and how many felt about the race. As the election enters its final weeks, Guardian US is averaging national polls to see how the two candidates are faring. We will update our averages once a week, or more if there is major news.

Latest polls

Polling average over a moving 10-day period

Guardian graphic. Source: Analysis of polls gathered by 538.

Latest analysis: For months, Joe Biden trailed Donald Trump in national polls by a narrow margin. After a disastrous debate performance in late June, Biden withdrew from the race in July. He endorsed Kamala Harris, and in the span of a few days Democrats across the nation lined up behind the new nominee. A combination of the Democrats’ fresh energy and JD Vance’s poor performance on the campaign trail after he was announced as the Republican vice-presidential nominee saw the polls swing in the Democrats’ favor. By August, Harris began polling above Trump for the first time in the race.

Next week will see the first polls conducted after Harris was named the official nominee at the Democratic national convention, and we’re likely to see a further uptick in the poll numbers for Democrats. But the election is still weeks away, with more debates and potentially poll-shifting moments to come. – Will Craft, 23 August

Notes on data

To calculate our averages, Guardian US took a combination of head-to-head and multi-candidate national polls and calculated a rolling 10-day average for each candidate. Our poll tracker uses polls gathered by FiveThirtyEight and filters out polls from lower-quality pollsters.

Polling averages capture how the race stands at a particular moment in time and are likely to change as the election gets closer. Our averages take into account national polls and are an estimate of the support that the candidates have on a national stage. The election is decided by the electoral college, so these averages should not be taken as a likelihood of winning the election in November.

This article was amended on 24 August 2024 to correct the timing of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate, which was in late June, not late July as an earlier version said.

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